Helicopters and C-list Celebrities

I recently experienced a magical day working out at our big sea ice runway, Pegasus Airfield. I was technically out there for “training,” but most of the cargo guys don’t want me touching any of their machinery with a 10-foot-pole. So as per usual, I followed the cargo guys around like a lonely puppy asking what everything did. Like tired adults they would occasionally throw me a bone and let me help them move something light and unbreakable.

There were two reasons why this particular day was magical: First, they were unloading a New Zealand helicopter from the belly of the C-17 and assembling the copter right on the ice runway. Second, a local Antarctic celebrity, Anthony Powell, was out there filming scenes for his upcoming TV series on Antarctica. 

Anthony “Antz” Powell made the popular Netflix documentary Antarctica: A Year on Ice in 2013. It gives a great overview of what it is like working at McMurdo Station for a full 12 months. Several years ago Antz married an American woman, Christine, in the dead of the Antarctic winter. They patched in Christine’s father on the phone for the wedding ceremony. Parts of their ceremony at McMurdo Station are shown in the documentary. (Christine and I actually work together in the same office next to our cargo bay. She is a lovely, intelligent woman).

Antarctica: A Year on Ice was the piece of propaganda I used to convince my father not to worry about my working in Antarctica for 6 months. Instead my plot backfired. After watching that documentary, my father is terrified that I will marry a New Zealand man and never return to America.

But I digress….

Since I worked with Antz’s wife, I deemed myself worthy of approaching the filmmaker and casting a literal and metaphorical shadow on his film scene. He graciously let me join his set.

There we were….Two legendary celebrities….Antz Powell and Kelly McCord. Chatting like old friends and exchanging filming tips. (I am envisioning similar conversations happening between Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg).

Soon they unloaded the rotor-less helicopter. I realized that a helicopter without its blades looks suspiciously like my Mini Cooper back home in Texas (a silly light-weight toy that could never handle the elements of this ferocious continent).

But that was an erroneous assumption (as most of my assumptions are down here). And as Antz and I stood filming side by side, (Antz with his fancy high-tech camera and I with my sexy android phone), we witnessed this fragile, flimsy little bird explode to life. It gracefully churned up a plume of white icy powder and rose like a phoenix into the blue skies.

The irony of the day was that I probably got the better shot of the helicopter take-off with my crappy phone than he did with his sub-zero, Hollywood camera. (Probably because the wind kept blowing my hair in front of his camera lens….oops).